What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?

Well, to answer the titular question, if you're a lizard, you break it off to get away, although if you're a monkey you do something quite different with your tail. Based on the charming 2003 picture book written and illustrated by Robin Page and Steve Jenkins, the simply-animated What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? looks at the various uses animals make of their ears (crickets hear with ears on their knees), eyes (chameleons look two ways at once), mouths (snakes swallow eggs bigger than their heads), noses (platypuses use their noses to dig in the mud), feet (chimps eat with their feet), and tails. Narrated by James Naughton, with music by David Mansfield, this entertaining adaptation of the beautifully illustrated book (featuring cut-paper collages) is also an ALSC Notable Children's Video for 2009. DVD extras include an interview with Page and Jenkins (who talk about their collaborative work style), as well as over two dozen roughly-half-minute “Animal Facts” profiles, and a read-along option. Recommended. Aud: K, E, P. (R. Pitman)